Orla said the shop expected theft. They included it in the price, apparently, which made taking something an objection to the price rather than a crime.
Willa had heard Orla explain unpaid internships, inherited property and the difference between a gift and an obligation. Each explanation arrived after Orla had obtained the useful part.
They were twenty-three. They had met at a language course Willa attended on a bursary. Orla invited her everywhere, paid without asking and occasionally introduced her as someone she was helping. Willa kept waiting for the invitation that would not require being grateful. This morning she had tried to borrow Orla's charger, but the plug did not fit her old phone.
In the boutique, Orla held a coat against Willa's shoulders.
"Your size."
It was the color of wet clay. Willa could see herself wearing it to interviews, taking it off carefully because it belonged to her rather than to somebody lending her a better version of herself.
"I can't afford it."
Orla rolled her eyes. The fitting-room attendant had gone to find a different size for another customer. Willa's large canvas bag lay on the bench between them. Orla looked at the bag, then back at her.
"Don't make me spell it out."
Willa had already stolen something that morning.
Orla's ring was in the small zipped pocket inside the bag. She had taken it from the bathroom shelf while Orla dressed. It was a narrow gold band with three small stones, valuable enough to sell, ordinary enough that Orla might think she had misplaced it. Orla had left it there while complaining about the cost of repairing a watch that cost more than Willa earned in a year.
Willa had intended to return it. That was a version she could keep until she tried to sell it.
Now she folded the coat into the bag while Orla stood in the fitting-room doorway. They left separately, as Orla suggested. Willa could hear her chatting to the attendant about the light in the mirrors.
The guard stopped Willa before she reached the street.
He spoke quietly. That was worse than shouting. He asked her to come back inside, and people kept shopping as though she had merely been called to collect a package.
Orla stood beside the till with a bottle of perfume. She saw Willa, saw the guard's hand hovering near her elbow, and turned toward the assistant again.
"Orla," Willa said.
The guard looked between them.
"Are you together?"
Orla hesitated for less than a second.
"No."
Willa felt the stolen ring pressing through the bag against her hip. Until that moment it had seemed to belong to a separate event, a private wrong she could still reverse. Now both things were in the same bag and she was carrying them into a small office beneath the stairs.
The manager asked her to empty it. The coat came out first. Then her wallet, notebook and a packet of tissues. She left the little pocket zipped.
"The woman outside knows me," she said.
"The woman outside has paid for her purchase."
"She told me to take it."
The manager looked tired. Willa heard how the account sounded: caught with something she could not buy, inventing a wealthy stranger who ordered her to steal. Her phone was dead. The messages between them were inaccessible, and Orla was giving the assistant an address for delivery.
Willa unzipped the pocket and put the ring beside the coat.
"That belongs to her."
The manager stopped writing.
"She gave it to you?"
"I stole it. This morning. From the bathroom in her flat."
She described the flat, the shelf, the chipped yellow dish where Orla kept the watch awaiting repair. She told him the address Orla had just given outside. He left the office with the ring in his hand.
Orla came in immediately.
"You took that?"
There was real hurt in her voice. Willa had not expected the hurt to survive everything else, and it nearly made her apologize before remembering why Orla was now willing to know her.
"We were together this morning," Willa said.
The manager asked Orla whether she wanted to report the ring separately. Orla looked at the coat, then at Willa. For a moment Willa thought she would admit what happened in the fitting room. Instead Orla said she wanted her property back.
They waited while the store dealt with the theft. Orla called her father from the corridor. Willa could hear the softened voice she used when a situation needed to be made smaller for someone else.
Before leaving, Orla offered to pay for the coat.
Willa looked at the manager. Payment would not erase what he had already recorded. She looked at the ring, now back on Orla's finger, and saw her friend waiting to become generous again.
"It doesn't fit," Willa said.
Orla went. The manager unfolded the coat to inspect it for damage. Willa helped smooth one sleeve because he was having difficulty making it lie flat, and because her hands needed something ordinary to do while they waited for the next person to arrive.
